University of Massachusetts Dartmouth says no further cuts will be made to research centers during 2014-15 year

A little more than a year after officials at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth announced a plan to cut about $800,000 total in institutional funding for its academic research centers, officials said this week there would be no further cuts to those centers' budgets for the 2014-15 school year.

DARTMOUTH — A little more than a year after officials at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth announced a plan to cut about $800,000 total in institutional funding for its academic research centers, officials said this week there would be no further cuts to those centers’ budgets for the 2014-15 school year.

University spokesman John Hoey said the centers are slated to be level-funded, meaning this school year, they will receive the same appropriation from the university they had received during 2013-14.

Last year’s overall funding cuts slashed about 25 percent from the budgets of 13 research centers at UMass Dartmouth, with most of those cuts directly affecting their directors’ salaries.

At the time, officials said the cuts were needed as part of a plan to address a $15 million shortfall in the university’s overall budget.

The cuts also intended to spur centers to seek diverse funding streams, mostly from sources outside the university. When asked about the status of the university’s budget this week, Chancellor Divina Grossman said the situation “is much better.”

Both Grossman and Hoey said the budget concerns had been addressed by budget reductions in various areas, as well as reallocations into others.

“It’s still a fragile process,” Hoey said.

In an Aug. 25 letter written to Grossman, Chief Financial Officer Mark Preble said efforts overall are strengthening the university. The letter included a report that outlined the revenues received by 10 different academic centers.

The university funds that had largely supported most of the centers were derived from its state appropriations and from tuition and fees paid by students.

Preble said modestly reducing institutional subsidies to the research centers was among the areas for reductions “that would not affect the quality of our teaching, research or community outreach.”

“When we combine institutional subsidies with external funding we get the true picture of our centers’ financing and how they have fared over the last couple of years,” Preble said.

The report shows that overall both revenue streams were reduced, with centers overall receiving about $300,000 less in external support. Preble said most centers actually increased their external revenues, and said the net reduction is largely because of the loss of $1 million when a faculty member associated with the Kaput Center for Research and Innovation in STEM Education left the university.

Some centers’ directors publicly blasted the cuts to university support when they were announced last year, including former Center for Policy Analysis director Clyde W. Barrow, who last spring resigned from both the position and as a professor at the university.

Barrow recently joined the political science department of the University of Texas-Pan American campus in Edinburg, Texas.

Page 2 of 3 - Barrow said that, based on communications he had received prior to tendering his resignation in April, the indication at the time was the centers had been scheduled to receive “additional cuts this year and next.”

According to the university’s report, the center last year saw a 24 percent reduction in university support, going from $234,667 in 2013 to $179,365 in 2014.

A university report outlining centers’ budgets also shows that upon the appointment of a new director, Michael Goodman, in May, the center boosted its revenue stream from external sources by a little more than $302,000, bringing the center’s total revenue to $684,723.

Goodman, whose background is in applied social science research, said obtaining outside funding is “fairly standard practice” and his prior research activity at the UMass Donahue Institute was “self-supported.”

“It requires a degree of entrepreneurship, and an ability to partner with faculty and students who have unique skills who have capacity to do the work,” Goodman said.

“I don’t think one has to be a gun for hire in order to make it work,” Goodman said. “The balancing act is as follows: Identify public issues of significance. Identify the projects that need to be done that have application in real world, and then identify potential sponsors.”

Goodman said, in other cases, “we might be approached by sponsors. So some of it can be fee-for-service works.”

Because the research is performed under a university name, “maintaining objectivity is paramount.”

“If done properly, I think it can be done,” Goodman said.

Longtime Center for Marketing Research director Nora Ganim Barnes said she believed some centers could face difficulties in securing outside funds because there may not always be funding that targets their centers’ research areas.

“I think it may not be possible for all centers to be self-sustaining,” Ganim Barnes said. “A lot of grant money is targeted money. Very often they want certain things studied. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that. But when things are targeted, it just makes it more difficult.”

Ganim Barnes confirmed that, despite previous fears of additional funding cuts, the center she heads will receive the same amount it had received last year in the upcoming school year.

According to a break down of that funding, the Center for Marketing Research received $91,005 in university appropriations this past year. In the year prior, 2013, it had received $121,190.

The reduction was mostly off-set by an increase in “external support,” according to university documents. In fiscal 2013 the center received $71,885 in external funding. A year later it received $91,190. With both revenue streams accounted for its overall budget in 2014 ended up reduced by about 6 percent, just under $11,000.

Page 3 of 3 - When asked if the center will continue to seek more funds for self-sustenance, Ganim Barnes replied, “We will try.”

“The plan is to continue as best we can to serve the business community and our students, to try to encourage collaborative works and internships,” Ganim Barnes said. “Our center is really about bringing together the business community and our students to the best we can.”